Convicted killer Travis Vader’s bid for a new trial has been rejected by the Alberta Court of Appeal.
“Based on the facts as he found them, the trial judge was ultimately correct in convicting the appellant of manslaughter,” the appeal court said in a judgment released Friday.
“We see no prejudice having befallen the appellant as a consequence of the trial judge’s analysis, and no benefit in a retrial to test again whether the appellant should have been convicted of manslaughter, in the robbery killings of the McCanns.”
In January 2017, Vader was sentenced to life in prison for manslaughter in the deaths of St. Albert couple Lyle and Marie McCann.
Last November, lawyers for Vader appeared before the appeal court to argue he should get a new trial on grounds that a number of errors were made during his original trial.
They argued in court that the trial took too long. They said his convictions should be stayed.
Vader was originally convicted of two counts of second-degree murder.
But after it was discovered that Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Denny Thomas had relied on a section of the Criminal Code that had been ruled unconstitutional, Thomas downgraded the convictions to manslaughter.
The McCanns, who were in their late 70s, vanished in 2010 after leaving their home to go camping in British Columbia.